(Part 4) Top products from r/UIUC

Here is some advice with a degree of seriousness.

• Buy a high quality laptop: I bought a budget device only to regret it all the while. The price you pay for a device which is going to be ubiquitous in your college experience is a small one, if you look at the entire cost of college.
  
  
• Really ponder about your major. I can't tell you what a small fraction of students actually know the fundamental nature of their major until well into their coursework. If you can visit campus, they have many many different books which draw up an outline of what exactly you are going to be studying. If you live nearby, try visiting the college and see for yourself the nature of the various departments. Switching majors early into college is easy.
  
  
• Read college advice books. some would disagree here, but I see no reason is repeating the same mistakes made by thousands of college students before them. There are a thousands things that I would change about my college experience, but I did the best I could as I went in completely blind. I would recommend some books to incoming freshmen.
  
  

1. The Freshman Survival Guide
   
   
2. Been There, Should've Done That
   
   
3. Procrastination was my biggest issue in college. It is only now (well after graduation) that I realize the importance of a proper system of productivity. The best book I can recommend is Getting Things Done - by David Allen. This isn't some cheesy, feel good self help book. This a solid methodology to address productivity in everyday life. If you implement the method even to a small degree, you will have an incredible amount of benefit in your college life.
   
   

• Get yourself in shape: The college experience has a lot to do with meeting and interacting with people. Your choice of major is definitely a handicap right from the start. But you can help yourself by keeping yourself in good physical condition. And mind you, fitness is a lot more than just vanity.
  
  
• Familiarize yourself with support systems. This applies when you get to the end of your summer. UIUC is literally filled with hundreds of departments, all of them there to help you. Be it health, academics, housing or anything else, there are people who give valuable advice. Because I went in blind, it took a while for me to find my bearing around all these support systems. The Counseling Center is an excellent resource that every freshman should make use of.
  
  
• Thank your High School teachers: If you are amongst the group of people who had a fulfilling high school experience, make sure to thank those who made it possible. Have lunch with your favourite teacher/coach. Tell them how you are thankful for their contributions. Believe me, my mom's a teacher. It'll mean a lot to them. I know it will be hard for you to understand this, but the predominant majority of your friends from high-school will become irrelevant in you life through college. So make sure you don't forget the people who really matter like family, teachers and community leaders.
  
  
• Learn something different: You'll have the entire 3-4 years to learn things in your major. So take time out to learn new skills, that have nothing to do with your major. Welding, dancing, painting, photography, etc. Exploring interests is something that you won't have time for later on in life. So make best use of it when you can.
  
  
• Finally, relax! College is going to be a blast. An experience you have no idea of at the moment. So there is little point in worrying about it. Don't get all up in your head and worry about the future. You are going to fall, over and over again. But you will also learn how to pick yourself up, and that is what is going to make a real individual out of you.So savour those things which you will soon start to miss. Explore your hometown, eat at your favourite local restaurant, go on a road trip with friends, spend time with family. Enjoy!

Tunnels:

Most of the steam tunnels around campus are located under bike paths (easier to dig up if the need ever arises). It's pretty simple to figure out where the tunnels are by observing the location of the hatches you see, JULIE markings (steam tunnels are normally denoted with yellow spray paint), or by looking to see where water dries or snow melts a bit faster than everywhere else. The Campus Administrative Manual states that all new steam tunnels will be "shallow" tunnels (about 3 feet tall, most of which is taken up by the pipes). Instead of allowing maintanence workers to comfortably walk down the tunnels (most of the old tunnels are 8' tall and 6' wide - roughly 3' after the pipes and their supports), the sidewalk is broken up into liftable concrete pieces. Figuring out which tunnels are shallow and which are "normal" is often difficult.

Pipes:

The tunnels house pipes that transport steam, cold water, and in one place, fuel. Because steam is highly corrosive, the pipes are designed to be replaced periodically. New pipes are made of PVC and are well insulated, so they need much less care. On top of the pipes, there are assorted valves, steam traps, sump pumps, and other equipment.

Buildings:

The tunnels often connect to various buildings around campus. None of the dorms connect. Almost all of the buildings on the Quad (with Lincoln Hall being the notable exception) can be accessed from the tunnels. The tunnels lead into a mechanical room in the building (nicknamed the "hot room"). Exploring buildings from the tunnels is a great way to get caught - doors lock behind you, there's a much higher chance of someone being there late at night, etc. The only case I know of someone getting caught in the UIUC tunnels was a result of exploring a building.

Physical Dangers:

The tunnels are a hazardous place. The main reason I'm taking the time to post this is to make sure that if people do explore the tunnels, they do so safely.

The pipes are hot. The valves are hot. Steam leaks happen - best case, you hear a hiss and can locate the leak and avoid it. Worst case - the leaks are often periodic in nature. They'll burst some steam every few seconds/minutes. There is asbestos covering some of the pipes. This isn't a danger unless disturbed - try your hardest not to disturb it. There's a lot of rusty metal, and there are places where water collects. Pay attention to where you're walking, and avoid walking through water - you never know what could be in it.

Legal Dangers:

First off, the police will never follow you into the tunnels. They are not willing to risk their safety in order to catch someone for trespassing (technically criminal trespassing on state property). That doesn't mean, however, that you shouldn't be extremely careful entering the tunnels. If you are spotted, you'll have a much harder time getting out unnoticed. Getting out is much easier - pick a hatch in a secluded spot, that has a grate you can scan the area from. There is an increasing number of cameras around campus, and all outdoor cameras are equipped with an infrared spotlight. Be aware of when you're nearing a hatch or other opening, and keep your voice down, and do your best to hide your flashlight.

If you do get caught, you're likely looking at probation from the University, and about 60 hours of community service. Your employer will likely be notified, and most don't appreciate hearing about a court case. Student Legal Services, in the Union, is a great resource for times like this.

Getting In:

You only need to find one entrance. Once you're in, you can go around propping other hatches to maintain future access. Check construction sites. Keep an eye out for service vehicles. Pull on every hatch you see - eventually you will find an open one.

Resources:

inflitration.org is a great resource for urban exploration (specifically this page). If you find that information useful, I cannot recommend their book enough.

Protips:

Bring plenty of Gatorade (throwing the bottles in the freezer beforehand is a nice touch). Bring flashlights and extra batteries. Bring a small first aid kit. Bring at least one friend. Let someone know where you're going and when you expect to be back. These might seem like overkill, but people have gotten seriously injured. These simple extra precautions will go a long way towards keeping you safe, and the extra peace of mind will make your trip more enjoyable.

Stay south of Green. The tunnels on the north side don't connect together well, and many systems have a single entrance/exit.

Be considerate - there are a lot of random artifacts from earlier explorers (can you find a beer can with a pop top?). Don't take anything, and try to minimize your footprint. If you want to tag the walls, use chalk.

Some not well known secrets: There are multiple levels of tunnels. There's a mailbox where you can leave/read messages. If you're not careful, you can easily find yourself in the power plant (AKA "Hell").

Don't touch anything. The main reason access is tightly controlled isn't because of any liability reasons - a simple spin of a valve can have catastrophic consequences when it's controlling highly-pressurized steam. There are a lot of things that look like light switches - and most of them are. Some, however, control other equipment.

Finally, be alert, be careful, and be aware of your surroundings.

If you have some free time, it might be a good idea to take some time to read, journal, and learn new skills.

You can journal about the fall semester and try to brainstorm the reasons for why you got a 2.5 GPA. Were you taking time to study every day, were you spending too much time at Kams, or were you spending too much time alone on reddit and not developing a social circle? There's a lot of reasons that can lead to a difficult semester and identifying them is important to prevent the same problems from happening again in the spring. Also the act of journaling will help you process your thoughts in a more productive way than if you are just ruminating.

Reading would also be a great use of your time because for one, the act of reading helps to alleviate feelings of loneliness. You can also read different books about motivation, psychology, health, or success that can give you some tools on how to think about your problems. Some books that were beneficial to me when I was in a similar situation were, "Change Your Brain Change Your Life (before 25)," "The Defining Decade," and "Mindset." Here's the links to them on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/Change-Your-Brain-Life-Before/dp/0373892926

https://www.amazon.com/Defining-Decade-Your-Twenties-Matter/dp/0446561754

https://www.amazon.com/Mindset-Psychology-Carol-S-Dweck/dp/0345472322/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1483208928&sr=1-1&keywords=mindset

Lastly, learning new skills will help you increase your confidence and remind you that you are a capable person. Learn how to solve a rubix cube, learn to play a song on some instrument, take a coding class online, or teach yourself how to make an omelette. Honestly, you can teach yourself anything and it will be beneficial. Learning these small skills will make you feel productive and increase your sense of self-efficacy.

Try not to think of your failures as a sign that there is something inherently wrong with you or that you are a failure. You have an incredible capability to grow as a human in all areas of your life and failing is a good sign to show that your pushing yourself to learn. In the words of John Wooden, "Failure isn't fatal, but failure to change might be."

I'll leave you with one last quote that I found to be inspirational: "Action is a great restorer and builder of confidence. Inaction is not only the result, but the cause, of fear. Perhaps the action you take will be successful; perhaps different action or adjustments will have to follow. But any action is better than no action at all." - Norman Vincent Peale.

ILL!

I studied from reading the stewart book and looking at a ton of old midterms and finals. I think you get around 3 hours but I don't remember exactly. From what i saw people say online it's usually harder than the old finals, but for me the finals were a lot harder than the exam... so difficulty probably varies. And yeah it's formatted exactly like the old finals, like 3 or 4 free response and I want to say around 15? (big error bars) multiple choice.

I didn't take 231 but so I don't know if it's exactly the same but you def have the same amount time since everyone takes it in the same room.

Good Luck!

There are actually several reasons more security cameras would be a bad idea. Here are some reasons from the ACLU. In addition to that, security cameras are reactive and not proactive. In other words, they do not prevent crime, they only make it easier to catch the criminal (sometimes). They might make you feel safer causing you to let your guard down thereby making you ironically more vulnerable. Security cameras also create an environment of mistrust which divides not only the University from the surrounding community (already a huge issue in Chambana) but also students from the administration which is always watching (George Orwell wrote a great book on this called 1984.) And finally, to expand on a point made by the ACLU, UI already has a surprising number of security cameras (1028 as of 2014, Source) and monitoring all of that video is tedious work which requires hiring new staff and expanding an already bloated administration and/or police force, which is scarcely something the University can afford, especially without a state budget.

It's the introductory course. As others have said, you'll learn hiragana and katakana within the first two weeks. You'll also cover through Chapter 10 in this textbook.

It will gradually get harder as you progress through 203 and 204, but I really enjoyed it. The instructors are great.

Understanding the Linux Kernel is the book that they recommend you read throughout the course, and it actually seemed to be really helpful to the people who read it. You could brush up on C and basic data structures since you'll be coding a lot in C; you also use x86 but you'll learn that during the class.

Besides that there's not much you could do since most of the material, if not all of it, will probably be new to you unless you've learned about system software/operating systems before. However, if you want a head start then you could start reading Understanding the Linux Kernel. Good luck, and may the Linux gods be on your side during MP3.

Behold, the greatest textbook I read in college. David Klein's Organic Chemistry was the single most important factor in me getting an A+ in organic chem 1 and 2.

I took the Chem 236 equivalent at my community college where this textbook was recommended. When I took 436 at UIUC, they recommend the Loudon textbook. It's shit. Don't read it. Klein literally holds your hand and walks you through each chapter with plenty of problem sets that force you to master one topic before you move onto the next one. The organization, the prose, the explanations, the problems sets, the figures...they're all just so beautiful. The reviews on this book are phenomenal. Compare the reviews to Loudon and you'll see how much of a different there is.

Buy this textbook with the accompanying solutions book (absolutely necessary no questions asked), and read through every page and do at least 80% of the questions. Draw out those mechanisms until your hand is bleeding. You'll be better off than most of your classmates. I guarantee it.

I recommend this book

It's been very helpful for me.

The author ran a great blog over the years with related material, here's the archives. I would search in the category tags for items relevant to you.

I was in the same boat recently. I joined STEM mainly because I inspired by the greats (Feynman, Sagan, Hawking, and so on) that I grew up watching and reading about. They explained the big ideas and I got all excited and wanted to solve them. Over the years I got to into the weeds, fatigued, lost passion, and forgot about why I joined STEM. You just have to find that same passion that made you pursue STEM in the first place again.

​

Honestly everyone goes through this. Richard Feynman went through this and was "disgusted" with Physics. After doing some soul searching he rediscovered why he loved Physics again. He talks about this in a book of his "[Surely Your Joking Mr.Feyman](https://www.amazon.com/Surely-Youre-Joking-Mr-Feynman/dp/0393355624/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1536790260&sr=8-1&keywords=surely+youre+joking+mr+feynman)" and there's a youtube vid somewhere but I can't find it for some reason.

> down and said my wife and I are no longer married, does that effect us in any real way? No, it doesnt.

There are many rights bestowed by marriage. You might not realize it now, but what if your spouse got in a car accident and was hospitalized under critical conditions? If you weren't married, the hospital would have every right to deny you the access to see your spouse before they passed. What if you and your spouse had a child, and your spouse died? Would you like it if you were to see your child, the person you loved and nurtured to grow into a successful adult, taken away from you because the state refused to recognize your marriage? I suggest you read (or at least skim it like I did) the book "Why Marriage Matters: America, Equality, and Gay People's Right to Marry" to see why the LGBT community feels threatened by Trump. If you don't want to spend the $15 to buy the copy, I will gladly send you (or anyone else reading this) a pdf for free.

Awesome, I will take a look at that. Here is the book I have to teach myself with (used it for Calculus 2 a year ago). It seems like a solid book.

Thorton and Marion was the textbook when I took it and I would be surprised if it wasn't still. It's a solid undergraduate textbook. When I took it my professor more or less taught straight from it, but Makins will probably deviate a bit more (in a good way)

I recommend the cookbook How to Cook Everything Fast by Mark Bittman.. It has lots of recipes with easy-to-follow instructions and suggestions of how to adjust many of the recipes. Local libraries have copies if you want that: link.

its $60 online brand new

lower ur price lmao

May I ask why use that book, and not the older and more popular one by Huston Smith? Your flair says you are a TA, so I suppose you just use whatever book the department instructs you to use, but would you know why they prefer that book?

my advice

get this book:

https://www.amazon.com/Metal-Rhythm-Guitar-Vol-Stetina/dp/0793509580/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1539307160&sr=8-5&keywords=troy+stetina

I used these lectures and skipped 23-28 and all of the review lectures. Though, you may want to review if there is any material in there that would be on the exam. I just ran out of time / got lazy towards the end. It helped me to buy the book and do homework assignments in the relevant chapters as I watched each video. It's not the same book used in the lectures, but for the most part it follows, and if it doesn't it was just out of order. The textbook is okay but is more or less the video lectures with the chalkboard diagrams and examples in print; there's not that much additional information. Doing practice problems is invaluable. Much of Math 415 is algorithmic.

I think I initially misunderstood what you meant by "people ARE talking about it" ...
When I say that Yingying's family members (father, maternal aunt, and boyfriend) are silenced, I mean that they are in a foreign country beholden to the country's laws, standards, culture and language. As I mentioned earlier, I believe it is only the boyfriend that speaks english.

Did you ever read the book "The Rape of Nanking" by Iris Chang?

https://smile.amazon.com/Rape-Nanking-Forgotten-Holocaust-World/dp/0465068367/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1499167525&sr=8-1&keywords=rape+of+nanking

It offers a poignant description of what happens to trauma survivors (those personally or vicariously affected by life-threatening events) when they have no outlet for their experiences / story. I hope that this makes sense. I understand that there might be language barriers that adversely affect communication, especially online.